Description: Hal Gogarty, a seventeen-year-old American, arrives in Salonika, Greece, with his family as World War II is looming in Europe. He falls in love with Magda Sevillas, his tutor in German. She is a brilliant, copper-haired woman of twenty who is half Greek and half Jewish. Their delicately extended courtship is consummated when Hal leaves home to join Magda on the island of Thassos, where she has fled to escape an arranged marriage. Hal and Magda discover the secret contours of their love as they travel through the green mountains and yellow valleys of Greek Macedonia on their way to what they hope will be a new life in Athens. As they learn about the choices lovers have to make when they find themselves in unknown territory - and about the choices imposed on them by capricious gods - the war moves in to separate them. Their final lesson has to wait for the reunion that comes nine years after they have gone separate ways. This is a story of self-discovery in landscapes of love and peril. It is also in many ways the story of human love in this century - without it there is only devastation, and it is worth pursuing against all odds. Edmund Keeley's voice is that of quiet assurance. It is the voice of memory that has no regrets, self-knowledge that is rich with experience, and hope that is fueled by love.

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